Building a robot as a hobby means buying lots of small items on line from a variety of places. For some reason, no single source has a reasonably complete selection. In fact, there seems to be little or no overlap between electronics stores, so I end up buying a few things from each of several places whenever I am trying to put something together. This means that I get confirmation and tracking numbers from lots of places. Right now, I have four different orders making their way towards me from different places (ok, one package is slippers).

It's pretty fun logging in and watching items move across the country. UPS seems to have been the first to do this, and sometimes the path can get pretty interesting, such as the time the package arrived in Boise (roughly the final destination for me), but it never left Boise. It wasn't out for delivery, and it hadn't departed in 12 hrs. When I looked the next morning, it had reached Hermiston, OR, then had left there and arrived in Boise again, and was out for delivery. Classic, but not the weirdest route I had ever seen.

Fed Ex has now gotten into this, though it doesn't seem like it is quite as comprehensive. They have a nice site though, and as they get better with it, I'm sure I'll become a Fed-Ex Tracking Fan.